When it comes to setting goals, Sierra Friend is here to tell you that “there is nothing magical about Jan. 1.
“People always think about creating change around the New Year,” Friend says. “I always tell people, when you say you’re ready to make a change, it doesn’t matter what day it is.”
Friend is the founder of MäksēLife, a two-in-one goal-setting and weekly planner brand she launched last October to help women “create a vision for their life with a system that keeps them glued to their goals.” (The name comes from the phonetic spelling for one of her favorite words, moxie, which means “showing up in your life with courage, determination and spirit.”)
The East Sac resident and mom of two boys isn’t just passionate about goal setting—she’s made it her career. After studying psychology at Sac State, she got into real estate sales when the market was going gangbusters and realized that her favorite part of the business was mentoring her team members—so much so that she created a weekly meeting with employees to help them with goal setting and accountability.
When the fast-paced market started to take its toll and she felt a burnout coming on, Friend decided to focus on her love of mentoring, and earned certification in both life and business coaching. She went to work with real estate professionals—eventually becoming an in-house consultant with Keller Williams Realty—to help them “take a really deep look at how their life is working.” Friend debuted a simple goal-setting system that she presented at workshops and speaking engagements around the region to help people take control not only of their schedules, but also of their personal and professional goals.
Friend has always been a fan of personal development—she readily admits that she listened to her mom’s Tony Robbins tapes as a teenager. A self-professed “planner nerd,” Friend created an Instagram account, @PlannerFriend, to connect with other planner fans, and gained a significant following (she has more than 15,000 followers). She was even asked by some big-name planner companies to serve on innovation teams to help them develop new products.
As her coaching and planning lives began to overlap, Friend realized that the biggest hurdles people face when making changes in their lives is process fatigue. It takes too long to fill out detailed calendars, notebooks and planners, and when they don’t see immediate results, they get disheartened and quit.
“I was finding it better for people to do really simple steps and take action right away to gain momentum with small wins right from the get-go,” Friend says. “When you see results, it gives you the confidence to continue.”
What everyone really needs is a dose of simplicity—and with her expertise, Friend is just the one to make it happen.
MäksēLife launched with just three products—a horizontal weekly planner, a vertical weekly planner and snap-in bookmarks—that allow users to easily incorporate goal setting into their busy lives. Friend says another flagship planner design and additional merchandise will be launched later this year.
“The planner helps you break goals down from annual to monthly to weekly, and helps you assess, ‘What does my life require of me this week?’ ‘What actions am I going to take?’” Friend says.
“Life gets messy, things change. This planner is flexible—flexibility tames that fear of failure. You have good weeks and bad weeks, and every week you have to opportunity to start over and make adjustments.”
For more information, check out @makse.life on Instagram and makselife.com.
Jessica Laskey can be reached at jessrlaskey@gmail.com. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram: @insidesacramento.
